Seeking Forgiveness
by gibbsheroic27
Summary: Charlie Davis' father was a hero. He's always hated him for that. Warning: Contains descriptions of self-harm, particularly cutting.


A/N: I own nothing. Warning/Trigger Warning: This fic contains descriptions of self harm, particularly cutting. There is some discussion of the idealization of pain and a fascination with blood. Please proceed with caution.

There will eventually be a sequel to this, telling Blake's side of the story. With hopefully a bit more dialogue. And plot. And maybe feels.

When Charlie is five years old, he kills his father. Nobody punishes him for it. Even his mother isn't mad. They just give him a sweet and tell him what a good boy he is, like his small fingers aren't stuck together with a viscous redness that never quite washes off.

Nobody ever punishes Charlie for it.

He never quite stops punishing himself.

CCC

Charlie receives his first pocket knife for his sixth birthday. His father has been dead for forty-eight days.

His mother wakes him up early and takes him into the station, primped and pressed into his Sunday best, paraded like the lonely black bear Papa took Charlie to see at the circus a week before he died.

Charlie wonders if the bear has died of loneliness yet.

One of the junior constables can't stop looking at Charlie, his little legs swinging casually on a chair outside the Superintendent's office, listening to Mummy crying into Mr. Dave's shoulder.

Mr. Dave comes over a lot these days.

Something cold and heavy is pressed into Charlie's hand, small fingers instinctively grasping around the contours of the blade. He briefly catches a glimpse of ice blue eyes before the office door is opening and Mummy is holding out an insistent hand towards Charlie, parade about to resume.

Charlie is grateful to that copper for a long time. It is twenty years before he stops being quite so grateful.

CCC

His mother never notices. Even in the earliest days when Charlie doesn't know quite how deep to cut to cause just the right mix of pain and bleeding. He ruins more than a few shirts when he cuts the wrong area just a little too deep, presses just a bit too hard before he discovers how to sharpen his switchblade.

He even, on one memorable occasion, destroys an entire set of sheets. Charlie's never really sure how his mother possibly missed that one, particularly considering he missed three days of school because he was too weak to leave first the floor and then the bed, but Charlie is as much of a loner before his father's death as he is after and as such he has nothing to compare his mother's amount of noticing to. Even years later, the status quo of his childhood seems normal enough to him that the first time he sees a mother carefully bandage her child's scrapped knee, he actually walks into a tree. Hard. Blake spends three hours watching for signs of concussion.

Mother marries Mr. Dave when Charlie is nine, and provides him with two little brothers in short succession, and for a while, Charlie forgets he has a blade at all.

CCC

Dragging a blade across his skin has always been Charlie's poison of choice, he never touches drugs, barely touches alcohol. Open flame holds no fascination for him, bruises a paltry annoyance.

He reads Bram Stoker when he is fourteen, and never quite shakes the kinship he feels towards the Count, because blood is one of the most fascinating things he's ever come across. Even when the sight of it always makes him slightly sick, slightly small and cold and lonely. Maybe that's why he likes it at all.

His favourite spot by far is always his wrists, partly because of the control required, the skill and precision. Mostly though, he finds it grounding. Centering. Absolving. Familiar.

Charlie's hands have been coated in red since he was five years old. There's nothing quite as comforting as making this reality a visual one as well as a tactile one.

At least then he can tell himself he isn't crazy.

CCC

The Doc finds out by accident.

Charlie would be less surprised if the man had reasoned it out. But no, it's an ordinary Sunday morning and Charlie is casually reaching across the table for the butter dish when his carefully buttoned shirt sleeve rides up just slightly.

An iron grip clamps around Charlie's wrist suddenly enough that the resulting sting causes him to simultaneously drop the knife into the butter and let out a rather undignified hiss.

Charlie keeps his secret for nineteen years before Blake blows the whole thing to hell in less than nineteen seconds over toast and jam.

It's a long time before Charlie is able to be remotely grateful for that fact.

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Blake wraps his wrists tightly with pristine white bandages before he takes Charlie's knife away. The symbolism is as lost on Blake as it is apparent to Charlie.

Charlie never actually made a contingency plan for how he would explain his little habit if he was ever caught, not after the first obvious years when everything went unnoticed. It's been over a decade since he actually worried about being found out, so he's never quite sure if his rather passive reaction to the Doc's sudden near takeover of his life, complete with restricted access to sharp objects which is actually rather impressive considering their combined professions and the fact they literally live in a doctor's surgery and work in a police precinct, and literally constant supervision both on and off duty, equally impressive and ingenious, is due to shock or loyalty or trust.

He waits so long for the anger that never comes to arrive, that he's in way over his head before he really has time to figure out which one it was. Because the Doc has known about his problem for almost three months by the time Munro is forced to resign, and darn it if Charlie will ever know if he's finally, truly, completely loyal to Blake because he's grown to love the man, or because Blake's spent the last three months literally expending all his energy keeping a man who he isn't even sure he completely trusts, let alone cares about, whole and hale and alive

Whatever the reason, the Doc's hand brushing fleetingly along his cheek on its route to warmly clasping his shoulder in an affectionate shake fills some hole in Charlie he'd forgotten was there to need filling.

CCC

Hobart's watching him again. Literally hasn't taken his eyes from Charlie for the last twenty minutes, no mean feat considering the man's rather stunted attention span and Charlie's prolonged-and extremely unnecessarily messy-eating of a ham sandwich for the past ten of those twenty minutes.

Charlie would find the whole thing rather creepy, if he wasn't still caught up in being quietly, incredulously impressed at the way Blake has managed to somehow mobilize just about everyone either of them knows into project "Charlie Watch" without telling them why, or even really telling them they're all doing it in the first place.

Charlie isn't really sure what he was expecting after the initial, rather uncomfortable and incredibly thorough, exam and cleanup of his injuries, besides the fact that the Doc won't even let him use so much as a butter knife at home, insists on examining him at periodic intervals, and insists he keep his wrists rather tightly bandaged.

What he didn't expect was Mattie to suddenly start requiring an escort to and from her shifts, or Mrs. Beazley to spontaneously offer him cooking lessons, something which turned out to be quite fun actually, although who is teaching who never really became clear, and whenever they make anything that requires a lot of chopping Lucien suddenly develops an interest in helping, which mostly means leaning against the doorframe or sipping tea at the table and attempting to sample things that haven't gone into the oven yet.

He definitely didn't expect Hobart to suddenly start borderline stalking him. Which is just creepy, except also incredibly fascinating because he still hasn't been able to work out how the Doc got him to do it.

He kinda did expect Blake's sudden bonding moments, which usually translate as sitting around the man's study between patients sipping tea or something a wee bit stronger, or spontaneous piano lessons in the evenings, the sound of Jean's knitting needles clicking a strangely soothing counterpoint to Charlie's initial massacre of the keys.

He's actually getting quite good.

He's also completely unsurprised to learn that the Doc is an absolute expert at tossing a room without leaving a visible trace in his wake. The Doc was definitely a spy, try telling him different. Also, he must have been a bloody good one because he found Charlie's entire stash of blades. On the first try.

"Charlie?" The Doc's voice has this odd ability to echo without really echoing Charlie finds, piercing right through the deepest of mental wanderings. And there's that look again, the combination of compassion and caring and stern concern that Charlie's pretty sure is permanently affixed to Blake's face whenever he so much as glances at Charlie in the last few months.

"Yeah Doc?" It's lunch hour, hence Hobart and the gross sandwich stalking thing, so seeing the Doc at his desk is depressingly usual these days. Depressing because having the man within forty feet of Munro is rather stressful at the best of times, but he and the Doc haven't really covered the whys of Charlie's little habit at this rather early juncture, so flicking his eyes meaningfully in the direction of Munro's office will have to be enough for now.

Blake's rather stubborn chin raise is all Charlie needs to know that he definitely got the point, but clearly has no intention of heeding to it. More important things to do, apparently.

"Charlie, you alright?" Alright seems to be their code for, hale and healthy and not bleeding from anywhere these days, because the Doc asks him this question roughly three times a day, like clockwork. Surprisingly, it hasn't actually gotten annoying yet.

Charlie hesitates for slightly less time than he did yesterday. "I'm alright Doc."

He's not sure if he really means it, but Blake's mouth quirks up slightly more than it did yesterday, and that's enough for Charlie to consider maybe meaning it a little bit more tomorrow.

CCC

Charlie Davis is five years old when his father, uniform freshly pressed and buttons freshly shined, steps in front of his young son in a bank lineup.

He is five years old when his father bleeds to death under his small clenched fingers. He doesn't even last long enough to say goodbye.

Charlie always hates his father for that.

Nobody ever blames him. He never quite stops blaming himself.

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"Doc! Don't fall asleep. Come on Doc, stay with me, help's coming. Damnit Blake, don't you dare fall asleep on me!" Charlie's voice is starting to fade, cracking painfully on every other syllable. He tells himself it's because he's been yelling for fifteen minutes straight.

They're on a desolate edge of town, nothing but scrub and a long gone rather trigger happy no-longer just a suspect murderer. They hadn't told anyone where they were going.

Charlie screams again to attempt to drown out the voice in his head whispering, "You should have known better Davis". It sounds suspiciously like Munro.

Charlie's hands slip slightly, fingers glowing white through the sticky redness, a grotesque counterpoint to the blue of the Doc's waistcoat. Its Mrs. Beazley's favourite.

Charlie picked it out for the Doc's fiftieth last month.

A ragged sob forces its way past Charlie's fiftieth gasped "Come on Doc, stay awake. Please!" Blake's been unconscious for nearly all of those fifteen minutes. Charlie doesn't even know if he has a pulse at this point.

"Failed again," a voice whispers. It sounds nothing like Munro this time.

Tears drip down Charlie's freely bleeding wrists to land on his interlaced fingers. He's rather surprised that they aren't red when they land.

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Charlie Davis is twenty-five when a suspect high on a substance Blake hasn't identified yet pulls an old service revolver seemingly out of thin air and swings it randomly and violently in all directions.

Blake shoves Charlie firmly out of the line of fire a second before the gun goes off twice.

Charlie doesn't think he'll ever forgive the Doc for that.

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Charlie is twenty-five years old when he sits quietly beside a hospital bed and watches the Doc's eyes slowly flutter open, watches the man lick his parched lips slowly, watches his eyes fill with sudden moisture, follows his gaze down to his own bandage free wrists, rolled sleeves revealing nothing but ridged pink and silver skin.

Charlie is twenty five years old when he looks into his father's eyes, and wonders if this is what forgiveness feels like.


End file.
